The Wall Street Journal launched its website on April 29, 1996. It was originally known as Wall Street Journal Interactive Condition and was free until August 1996. Then the site began offering subscriptions and a free "trial period." But be ye not dismayed -- if your web browser is Firefox or Google Chrome, there are ways to bypass the paywall:

Well, the puzzle was not behind that paywall until earlier this week. I emailed WSJ support and they confirmed that the paywall was in place:

>Non-subscribers are able to view and access past editions crosswords and puzzles, however the current editions puzzle is available only for subscribers.

>Though you may subscribe to gain access to the puzzle on the same day.

I wrote back suggesting that they offer a puzzle-only subscription option, like the NY Times. I'm happy to pay the NY Times $40 a year (and AV Club, Crossynergy, C&R, and Elizabeth Gorski $25 each), but $360/year for a full digital subscription at the Journal would be too much.

Thanks for the links! The last one isn't to today's puzzle, so I guess it's the latest of the archive puzzles they said they're making available to the public.

I got another response, this time from the puzzles group, saying that the policy hadn't changed and that there was a glitch of some kind earlier this week. But I'm still getting the sign-in screen, and they're going to look into it.

A glitch, eh? I have an AOL account. One day the log-on name and e-mail for another AOL subscriber appeared on my screen. I called AOL and I was told, "It's some kind of glitch." I wonder how people explained technical problems before the word "glitch" was invented.